big love in rehearsal… Part 5

 Every rehearsal process has its ups and downs.  This week we experienced both.  On Monday and Tuesday, we rehearsed out of our space, and it showed.  Everyone was a little off.  It’s hard being inspired by a Cobb room!  There’s something about a small classroom which just didn’t work for anyone. However, as soon as we got back in the FFT, we were back on track.  By running the show, it became instantly clear what was working and what wasn’t.  We then went back and reworked what wasn’t working – a process that is as fun and exciting as rehearsal normally is. I personally am super-pumped about this show.  Looking forward to tech, when everything will come together, I can barely contain my excitement.  I don’t want to give too much away, but a little teaser: expect pillow fights.  Multiple pillow fights.

ARE YOU EXCITED YET

- William Bishop, Assistant Director, in his fifth weekly update about the process of the TAPS/UT Collaboration, Big Love.

come see the workshops!

In early February, University Theater’s quarterly workshop series presents the uniquely titled weekend of short theatre, SELF, TORTURE & ANXIETY. This evening of theatre features four very diverse performances directed by up and coming student directors at the University of Chicago. This winter’s workshop collection wi…ll present Bertolt Brecht’s THE INFORMER, David Ives’ VARIATION ON THE DEATH OF TROTSKY, John Patrick Shanley’s KISSING CHRISTINE and Donald Keene’s translation of the Japanese kubuki drama, CHUSHINGURA.
SELF, TORTURE & ANXIETY: a weekend of workshops, performs February 4-6 in the Francis X. Kinahan Third Floor Theater of the Reynolds Club.

Performances are 8pm on the 4th-6th, and 2pm on Saturday, the 6th. Tickets are $6. Thursday the 4th is a free preview.

big love in rehearsal… part 4

I’ve begun to realize that a show is like a living organism. When it is born, it has a distinct shape, a distinct style. But then it begins to grow and change. After last week, we had a rough idea of what the whole show looked like. This week, everything evolved. Our cast changed. Our designs changed. Our blocking changed.

Chicago director Jon Berry used the term “Hold on tightly, let go lightly” to describe his approach to theater in a class I am taking with him. I believe this has been the mantra of this week. When faced with the organic evolution of a show, we can’t cry about it, and we can’t struggle vainly to prevent this change. We must “let go lightly.” However, coming out of this week, we have an older, wiser theater piece on our hands, a piece which we must “hold on tightly” to, committing our full energies to this evolution.

Maybe next week the show will change radically again. Who knows? That’s how theater works. Change is in its blood. It’s frightening at times, but ultimately one of the things that makes it so exciting to be a part of.

- William Bishop, Assistant Director, in his fourth weekly update about the process of the TAPS/UT Collaboration, Big Love.

big love in rehearsal… part 3

This week we embarked upon an epic task – blocking the whole show. I am happy to report this was a riotous success. Sean has created a rehearsal room environment where he and his cast are engaged in a perfect flow of creativity. If he comes up with something great to do, all our actors are on-board. If a cast member does, he runs with it and sees whether or not it works. It’s this sense of creative ensemble which I as a theater-maker always try to achieve, and it’s one of the reasons why I am so passionate about making theater.

We did hit our first stumbling block though. Working on a show is like being in a relationship – there always comes a point when you question what you’re doing, when your partner, or your play, starts to confuse you, and maybe even does something you just can’t understand. Sean hit this point this week, when we realized that we were trying to block a scene which no one knew what to do with.

However, like a good relationship, it is important to stick through despite momentary upsets. When we return to this scene again, now with the knowledge of the whole arc of the play, I’m confident we will find something to make it work!

- William Bishop, Assistant Director, in his third weekly update about the process of the TAPS/UT Collaboration, Big Love.

big love in rehearsal… part 2

Rehearsals this week had a common theme: large rooms with many people in them. We started our rehearsals with the first readthrough of the play. It was super exciting to see the cast we had chosen finally speak the words which Mee wrote. The play which I have seen in my mind for the last two months is finally beginning to be realized. It was also cool to have everyone involved there at the same time, meeting new faces and watching my friends in the cast prove why we cast them. Sean ended the readthrough with a simple goal: if we make a show which everyone involved loves working on, good theater will arise naturally. I think our cast was excited to hear this as I was.

Who doesn’t love working on a show that is actually fun?

We then reassembled again to participate in a fight combat workshop led by our fight choreographer, Matt Hawkins. He seemed to bring Sean’s words to life. The workshop was fun from beginning (a group carry exercise) to end (short “performances” of the choreography we learned), but the final fights were exciting, honest, and engaging to watch and participate in. Having already tackled the text of the show head on, we began to grapple with the physicality of Mee’s world, which, as Mee says, is equally important in Big Love.

All in all, a great start to what promises to be a great process.

-William Bishop, Assistant Director, in his second weekly update about the process of the TAPS/UT Collaboration, Big Love.

“But the Giraffe”

In Spring 2010, TAPS/UT is deeply honored to present a staged reading of Tony Kushner’s “But the Giraffe.” In preparation, students will rehearse with multiple directors, including Charles Newell, Artistic Director of Court Theatre. Kushner’s visit is made possible through ArtSpeaks.

Cast for reading:
Evan Garrett (Rudy) is a 2nd-year in the College, currently majoring in TAPS and Religious Studies. Past production work with TAPS/UT includes directing two workshops, production managing for Workshops, and being a member of UT Committee. He is currently rehearsing as Guiliano in Charles Mee’s Big Love, directed by Sean Graney.

William Glick (Father) a third year double majoring in Political Science and Theater and Performance Studies. He has acted in The Lesson and directed Reverse Transcription and Fefu and her Friends.

Markie Gray (Mother) is a second year in the college majoring in English. Past production work with UT/TAPS includes acting in Aoi No Uye, Reverse Transcription, and Fefu and her Friends. She has also held various tech jobs that range from electrician to sound designer to stage manager.

Ellenor Riley-Condit (Little Girl)is a 3rd year majoring in Theater and Performance Studies. Previous production work includes Top Girls, Macbeth, The Last Ninety Minutes in the Life of Nikola Tesla, and The Stronger. She is also currently rehearsing Big Love, which she hopes you will see at the end of winter quarter

Fred Schmidt-Arenales (the soldier) is a 1st year in the College whose major is currently undecided. Past production work with TAPS/UT includes acting in Car Cemetery as well as the 2010 Winter 24 hour play festival.

Tamara Silverleaf (Grandmother) is a fourth-year in the college, majoring in Theater and Performance Studies. Over the past few years she has been an actor, designer, manager, and director at University Theater, as well as helping to found and curate the UChicago 24 Hour Play Festival.

Dan Stearns (grandfather), AB ’91, AM ’93, concentrated in Slavic Languages and Literatures. He was heavily involved with UT and theater in Chicago when he should have been writing his doctoral dissertation. He served on the staff of TAPS/UT for eight years first as technical director, then as production manager, before leaving in 2008 to earn his MFA at the Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy for Classical Acting at the George Washington University. He is currently understudying at American Theatre Company and will appear this summer at the Riverside Theatre Shakespeare Festival in Iowa City.

our new casts….

University Theater would like to congratulate the following casts for Winter 2010 productions:

Self, Torture, & Anxiety

Chushingura

Caroline O’Donovan
Ian Morrow
Sam Pollock
Christopher Shea
Malic White
Tamara Silverleaf

Kissing Christine

Christine: Hayley Doner
Larry: Tom Weisgarber
Server: Crystal Croyl

Variations on the Death of Trotsky

Trotsky: Graham Albachten
Mrs. Trotsky: Autumn McConnico
Ramon: Nicho Kelly

The Informer

Husband: Marc Amante
Wife: Bryn Adams
Boy: Caroline Cox-Orrell
Maid: Emma Gist

But The Giraffe

Little Girl: Elle Riley-Condit
Mother: Markie Gray
Father: William Glick
Rudy: Evan Garrett
Grandfather: TBA
Grandmother: Tamara Silverleaf
Soldier: Fred Schmidt-Arenales

Waiting for Godot

Estragon: Aaron Horton
Vladimir: Ricky Zacharias
Pozzo: Rudy Foster
Lucky: Edmund Mills
Boy: Ely Fish

Big Love

Bella: Kate Cornelius-Schecter
Eleanor: Eleanor Davis
Piero: David Federman
Giuliano: Evan Garrett
Oed: Khyle Gill
Nikos: James LaRocque
Lydia: Elle Riley-Condit
Constantine: Jason Shain
Leo: Sam Schulte
Thyona: Alli Urbanik
Olympia: Mary Claire Walther

Ensemble:
Rudy Foster
Megan Kingsbury
Izzy Olive
Christopher Price
David Ramsay

Big Love 1: Auditions

Sitting behind a folding table in a huge empty room last Monday, I could only think one thing: there are people at this school who really love making theater. For me, the Big Love auditions were a story of passion and commitment. Those who auditioned for Sean – in fact the vast majority of auditioners – came in on their first nights back in Chicago, choosing to spend their first hours of free time in the First Floor Theater. Tuesday and Wednesday auditioners had to deal with the added stress of being filmed. Finally, those who were called back had to troop to the FFT Friday morning, through a thick layer of snow and a thicker haze of early morning exhaustion.

What could compel college students to ever put this much effort into anything? I can only assume that my peers were motivated by the same force that motivated me to spend virtually every free minute of my time here working on shows. Our theater community is passionate and dedicated, and it constantly reminds me why I love being a part of it. So, looking forward to rehearsals, I can hardly suppress my excitement, because I know everyone else is just as excited as I am!

- Assistant Director William Bishop

This is the first in a series of posts about the process of the TAPS/UT Collaboration, Charles L. Mee’s Big Love. 

car cemetery in rehearsal…

Car Cemetery playwright Fernando Arrabal was born to a Spanish army general in 1932. Just four years later, another general— Francisco Franco— usurped Spain’s socialistic Popular Front, transforming the country into an arguably fascistic Catholic monarchy. In the decades that followed, Franco harshly brutalized his citizens for behavior as seemingly benign as speaking local dialects distinct from standardized Spanish. Franco’s violence towards his subjects never reached the systematization of other World War II leaders, but he nonetheless found good friends and allies in both Mussolini and Hitler.

This history seems at first like crucial context for Car Cemetery, a play whose avant-garde aesthetic is so distinctly “of its time”: Like Beckett and Ionesco before him, Arrabal was intent on deconstructing a realist aesthetic that didn’t quite capture reality as it stood after the horrors of World War II.  His employment of the character Milos, in particular—a totalitarian overseer of the car cemetery— indicates an interest in how brutally people wield power when given any glimmer of opportunity.

But the text begs another reading, as well—a reading that focuses not on Car’s implicit thematization of European crowd politics, but on the fact that it literally takes place in a massive junkyard. Where and why could this massive junkyard occur? In conversation with me, her designers, and other people I probably don’t know, Anastasia decided that Car Cemetery’s themes would resonate most if they took place in a Midwestern junkyard during the Great Depression.

The distance between these two locales—fascist Europe and New Deal United States—at first seems to pose a dramaturgical problem. How could we possibly relocate the script from Franco’s Europe to a world that was, if anything, flirting with fascism’s ideological opposite, socialism? The decision required a bit of dramaturgical fudging. This wasn’t fudging in the bad way, but fudging in the sense of “altering in order to make coherent.” As Anastasia pointed out, the play really deals with the question of totalitarianism. The specific context and form of that totalitarianism is irrelevant.

So how did we achieve the necessary melding of Arrabal’s fascist themes with our American setting? How did we set the play in Oklahoma, but hint back to and acknowledge the world Arrabal intended? Our choice of a propaganda backdrop (which will surround the audience in their seats) proves, I think, one of our most intriguing solutions.

Ignore the differing languages on these posters, and you’ll probably note their remarkable similitude: They’re all profile shots of bulky men, armed, and staring towards the infinite. The similarities make sense: They were all drawn around the same time. But they couldn’t reflect more ideologically different underpinnings. The top picture was created to advertise the WPA; the middle picture advertises Franco’s fascistic government; and the bottom picture advertises the socialist Popular Front that Franco overthrew. The European Fascist pictures we researched have their unique characteristics (including much more frequent backgrounds of leaping stallions), but for the most part they valorize the same masculine ferocity as do the democratic and socialist posters.

When you see Car Cemetery, you’ll probably note the propaganda posters all around you. Thanks to props manager Natalie Levy, all the included English phrases, Spanish words, and hammer-and-sickle imagery will have been scrubbed out. What remains shouldn’t preclude Arrabal’s Spain, nor should it necessarily suggest it. Instead, the posters should prime the audience for a world where manly might is both venerated and recognized as a menace: That’s the Arrabalian subject it would be a disservice to omit.

Christopher Shea, Dramaturg

come see car cemetery…

CAR CEMETERY resurrects the Christ story in an absurdist junkheap, where even the Messiah is tarnished by his surroundings.   The poor and the downtrodden live in a junkyard hotel built out of defunct cars, and trumpet-wielding Emanou and his friends sneak in nightly to play rock ‘n roll for them, spreading a gospel of music and defying the fascist state.  Soon Emanou is betrayed to the police, but his is no simple tale of sacred suffering.   The heavenly Passion drives this Christ less than his mortal passions: he lies, steals, and has sex, no holier than his neighbors.   Arrabal wrote CAR CEMETERY responding to the über-Catholic and fascist environment of his native Spain. The result is panic: a barely intelligible melding of violence, love, clowning, and betrayal.

CAR CEMETERY exists in a world of absurdity and abstraction, and Barron’s production pushes this to the extreme, where car doors stand in for whole cars, and characters swing violently between realism and illusion.   She is “not interested in sentimental theater that reaffirms our emotions,” instead challenging audiences to face the uncomfortable and the chaotic.  Because “Arrabal is perpetually concerned with subverting binaries (good and evil, sordid and sublime, master and slave), but he does not address gender, the most basic binary that divides human beings,” Barron will also throw issues of queer identity into the clowning chaos.  Inspired by the Panic Movement, Fernando Arrabal’s 1960’s surrealist theater collective, Barron’s thematic elements focus on the usage of monstrous and discarded elements that push the creative ensemble as a whole to evolve into brilliantly developed images on the stage. As Arrabal would say, CAR CEMETERY runs the gamut of sensations “from the grotesque to the beautiful, from shit to the heavens”.

Car Cemetery by Fernando Arrabal and Directed by Anastasia Barron (BA’10) runs December 2-5 in the First Floor Theater.

For More Information, email: William Bishop, Publicity Manager, william.f.bishop@gmail.com